Want to know how cancer develops? Or what needs to be done to make your morning coffee more aromatic? Or how a paddy field can lead to more rice? For answers to all these — and lots more — get to the root of genes.

The science of genetics touches more aspects of our life than any other branch of knowledge. Genes decide how you look, how good you are at staying slim, or at warding off a bout of cold without taking a health tonic. They even tell you why people behave the way they do.

The fields that genetics looks at are so wide that the subject can never get boring. “Genetics is an exciting field of science,” asserts Gaiti Hasan, a senior scientist at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore.

Austrian priest Gregor Mendel was the first to study genes in the 1860s. There was no further research for a long time owing to the lack of technology. But the science has got a boost in the last two decades with technological advancements which have made it possible for scientists to screen and read genes better than ever before.

Why does one need to study genetics? Because, scientists tell us, all the mysteries of life are locked up in genes. “Classical human genetics lets us link a disease or a trait like light-coloured eyes to an identifiable position on a chromosome (that consists of thousands of genes). With modern methods of molecular genetics, information from classical genetics can be rapidly converted to a molecular understanding,” says Hasan.

Such an understanding has innumerable practical applications. It may help scientists pinpoint a gene (or a set of genes) that makes a person vulnerable to a particular disease, such as cancer or heart attack. It can identify genes that confer immunity from metabolic disorders like diabetes or those that make a person capable of tolerating higher alcohol levels.

Scientists involved in genetic studies focus not only on the human genome but also on the genes of other animals as well as of plants. In recent years, scientists have been able to tweak the genomes of crops such as rice, wheat and coffee to either improve their yield or allow them to withstand adverse conditions such as drought, flood and salinity.

Similarly, scientists have been studying the genomes of animals such as mice, zebrafish, fruit flies, worms and monkeys. Such research has profound implications for human studies, says Hasan. It can be used to find new genes that control human disease conditions. Pharmaceutical companies use the genetic studies of animals to develop new drugs.

“It is a great time to be a geneticist,” says Ramesh Venkata Sonti, a scientist who works on plant and bacterial genetics at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad. “It’s like having a huge quantity of virgin feedstock,” he says.

Several Indian universities offer courses in genetics, mostly at the postgraduate level. There are, however, a few undergraduate courses, where genetics forms a major chunk of the syllabus. The University of Pune and Osmania University in Hyderabad offer such courses.

Postgraduate courses with a strong genetics content are offered by universities across India, including the universities of Delhi and Madras which offer an MSc in biomedical genetics. Andhra University has a postgraduate programme in human genetics and Madurai Kamaraj University offers an MSc in plant genetics.

Exciting career opportunities await students of molecular biology or molecular genetics. They can work in genetic counselling and screening units in hospitals or in biotech industries that screen for new drugs, or design, sell and administer genetic tests. They can also become researchers in laboratories.

Another interesting field of research is population genetics where scientists study variations in genes under the influence of four evolutionary forces — natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and gene flow. The human genetics unit of the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, and the Anthropological Survey of India, also headquartered in Calcutta, are two institutions that work in the area of population genetics.

With so many genes there to be cracked, geneticists will never run out of exciting opportunities. Genes — as Levi Strauss discovered in another context — are always trendy.